Home entertainment systems are proposed capable of playing back moving images as well as running game programs. In home entertainment systems, a GPU generates three-dimensional images using polygons.
[patent document No. 1] U.S. Pat. No. 6,563,999
Technologies have been proposed adapted to use tile images of a plurality of resolutions generated from a digital image such as a high-definition photo, to enlarge/reduce a displayed image or move the image upward, downward, leftward, or rightward. In this image processing technology, images of different resolutions are generated by reducing the size of a whole image (original image) in a plurality of stages, and the image in each layer is divided into one or a plurality of tile images, thereby representing the original image in a hierarchical structure. Normally, the image with the lowest resolution comprises one tile image. The original image with the highest resolution comprises the largest number of tile images. The information processing device enlarges or reduces a displayed image such that an enlarged view or a reduced view is presented efficiently by switching a currently used tile image to a tile image in a different layer. According to this image processing technology, high display resolution is maintained and a high-definition image is presented to the user when an image to be displayed is enlarged or reduced.
In association with improvement in high-speed network environments, services of delivering content data such as video and music over the Internet have become popular. A terminal device therefore need not maintain tile images in all layers to process images using tile images. An image for display (displayed image) can be generated in an almost real-time response to a change command from the user, by acquiring necessary tile images from a server as needed.